I’ll be honest. I’m among those of you (and there are a lot of us) who’d think of themselves as “math-challenged.” That makes me vulnerable to being impressed by people who do amazing things with numbers and then attribute meaning to the results. I’ve known people who were skilled at that whom I thought to be of good character. David Flynn comes to mind. But David could never tell me (or anyone else) WHY the number things he did or found “worked” (for lack of a better term). Other people who do this sort of thing are reputable (I’ll let you fill in the names there). Today I found a website that actually shows how such “findings” aren’t mystical and can be manipulated pretty easily to “discover” something:

Decoding Carl Munck, by Arto Heino

For those who aren’t familiar with Carl Munck, he became something of a late-night paleobabble wonder decades ago for creating something called archaeocryptography, defined in part as “the study of decoding a monument or structure by determining the underlying mathematical order beneath the proportions, size, and placement to find any re-occurring or unusual data in respect to that which is being studied” (Wikipedia). Here’s a more detailed explanation:

The coining of the word archaeocryptography is often attributed to Carl P. Munck, who after retiring from the US Military in the late 1970s began studying cartographic material among other topics trying to search for better answers as to why certain megalithic monuments exist. This led him to a formula he believes architects used to place and design various megalithic monuments. Munck’s theory claims that calculations using selected numbers or dimensions found in megalithic monuments or Egyptian pyramids yield the latitude or longitude of the site. However, in Munck’s findings, the prime meridian does not run through Greenwich, but through the Great Pyramid in Giza. His theory is known simply as “The Code” and asserts that an ancient Jewish numerological system known as gematria is used in the manipulation of numbers to other key locations, mathematical components and positions of sights in the geometry of their construction. (Wikipedia)

Munck and others would go on to assert that various structures around the globe are built as they are, where they are, as part of some intentional plan or code.

Heino’s essay shows how Munck worked the numbers — and how Munck’s system can be applied to anything (Heino applies it to a shed in his back yard — and so that must be a sacred site as well). Here, in a nutshell (from a comment at the end of the essay by Heino) is what his essay shows:

I am not addressing any issues with Mr Munck, or trying to convince you of anything, he can make all the assumptions he can from his own findings. All I have done is broken down his cryptography and I have shown how you can manipulate the data to suit any assumption that you want put to it.

I do not have an opinion on Munck’s work, other than he has made a concerted effort to convince the viewer of some tenuous relationships. I have spent my effort on unraveling the mathematical puzzles that he has placed before the public. I am the only person in 20 years who has found the methodology he has applied and the reverse engineering involved.

And if you read the essay you’ll see he really has reverse engineered the method.

Just so no one gets the wrong impression, I don’t think David Flynn is guilty of this sort of thing by intention. I knew David, and he wasn’t out to deceive anyone, gather a following, or be a guru. But, as many say, the numbers don’t lie — what Flynn was finding isn’t proof of a divine mind, nephilim-Watcher knowledge or, as others want to say, alien intelligences. That much is demonstrable by Heino’s essay.

One caveat. I don’t believe that the human engineers of ancient Egypt or any other ancient civilization had some sort of advanced knowledge that is beyond modern understanding (meaning that we cannot know it or reproduce it). But they could have had a knowledge that we don’t recognize or understand very well. I say this because of statements like this in Heino’s article:

The clear knowledge of Quantum Arithmetic and its true roots in Ancient Egypt, Sumer, Gobekli, Angkor, Mayan and other ancient civilizations are what we should be looking at, not some tricks of code that have no meaning except to promote disinformation and enrich the promoters.

I don’t think I’m out on a limb in saying that Heino over-estimates mathematical knowledge of these civilizations in quotations like this. Mathematicians (translation: people who know mathematics really well) have looked at ancient mathematical systems. There’s no knowledge of quantum physics in there (if that’s what Heino meant by “quantum” in the quotation). Here are some very good sources if you are so inclined:

Mathematics in Ancient Egypt: A Contextual History

Architecture and Mathematics in Ancient Egypt

The Babylonian Theorem: The Mathematical Journey to Pythagoras and Euclid

The Mathematics of Egypt, Mesopotamia, China, India, and Islam: A Sourcebook

Mesopotamian Mathematics 2100-1600 BC: Technical Constants in Bureaucracy and Education (Oxford Editions of Cuneiform Texts)

Essays in books and journal articles:

Powell, M.A., 1995. Metrology and mathematics in ancient Mesopotamia. Civilizations of the ancient Near East III.
Fowler D, Robson E. Square root approximations in Old Babylonian mathematics: YBC 7289 in context. Historia Mathematica. 1998 Nov 1;25(4):366-78.